benefit, for Nizam, like most Oriental rulers, was a very selfish man ; but even then their adoption would have done much good in the country, by showing the people some higher standard, either of comfort or convenience, to which they might aspire. He had already begun to improve his house, and he was most anxious to get a few native masons up from India to teach his people to build properly, and, with the marble which is to be obtained within a few miles from Chitral, to build a good house for himself. He wanted his men taught blasting, too, so as to be able to construct watercourses by which new lands could be irrigated, and he was always asking me if I could not have up some one to drive artesian wells to irrigate a large plain above Chitral. With a British officer beside him, therefore, to advise him, and keep him from branching out into any useless expenditure, he might have done much good work.
In dealings between him and the British Government much good accrued from his visit to India. The great art in dealing with these wild chiefs is to guide them and make use of them without actually employing force. The British Government does not wish to destroy their independence, and, in fact, would be only too pleased if they were really strong enough to be absolutely independent. But they are not, and never could be, strong enough for this ; and, as they are the neighbours of a great empire, the rulers of that empire have to ask certain things of them, the chief of which, as I stated above, is that they should place their foreign relations under the control of the suzerain Power. Nizam had been to India, he knew the resources of Government, and he knew that his interests lay in the preservation of a close alliance with the British. He, therefore, always acted with that object. By far the larger number of his people did not, however, know the real strength of 'Government, and when Nizam was murdered at the beginning of 1895, they rashly plunged their country into a war with
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